


Like a Thief in the Night

by QueenOfTheQuill



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thieves, Multi, Polyamory, clint loves getting teased don't let him fool you, darcy lewis is a great grifter and a better hacker, i don't know anything about technology i'm sorry, no one sleeps with anyone without full information, non-serious darcy/tony, timeline editing, tony is the mark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 02:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15233061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfTheQuill/pseuds/QueenOfTheQuill
Summary: Darcy Lewis was a hacker, and now is a grifter and thief, when the situation calls. With her team, she's willing to take a risk for the greater good.





	Like a Thief in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Casey, you have a ton of WIPs that you haven’t updated in months, why are you writing a one shot? I don’t know, hypothetical reader. I don’t know.
> 
> So this is definitely AU. For context, Darcy is a little bit older, and therefore had her internship with Jane Foster earlier. Thor will happen at his scheduled time, so Darcy didn’t meet him yet, however Jane still got a little close to some hard truths and the government (SHIELD) confiscated a lot of her research. Tony is pre-Pepper and still in his weapons-making phase. JARVIS exists, but isn’t public knowledge. As for some of the other characters, well… you’ll see. XD

“Elizabeth, babe, you ready?”

 

Darcy, leaned forward, inspecting her lipstick in the expensive vanity mirror in front of her. She rubbed her lips together to spread the bright red evenly before grinning at herself in her reflection and tugging her white dress down to display her boobs to their full advantage. “Coming darling!”

 

* * *

 

_Turns out paying for student loans was much easier when you could just hack your way into some money every now and then, so that’s what Darcy learned to do. She met up with this girl name Skye once or twice, flirted with Rising Tide membership before she decided that all that Anonymous bullshit wasn’t for her and that she’d rather just redistribute some wealth from rich assholes to make herself comfortable._

 

 _And hey, if rich actors who had sexual assault allegations against them suddenly donated thousands to women’s shelters in anonymous donations, no one could trace it back to her_ or _them, so she counted it as a win._

 

_She’d just finished funneling a quarter of some right-wing political dick’s latest campaign donation into a several shelters for trans women and queer kids when she heard a knock on the door._

 

_Quickly, she pulled up different screens, the one that matched her written day job, which was a remote tech expert. Gotta launder that money somehow._

 

_“Who is it?” she called, checking her peephole. A stunning redhead stood outside her door, holding a measuring cup._

 

_“It’s 3A! I’m here to be neighborly and borrow a cup of sugar.”_

 

_Darcy stared at her a second longer, then shrugged. It didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary, and besides, she’d been in that “out of a crucial ingredient and don’t want to run to the store” phase of baking before. Besides, she had her taser beside the door, like always, and took a second to holster it at her hip before flipping open the locks, physical and digital._

 

_“Hi,” said the woman with a bright smile. “I don’t think we’ve met yet. I’m Natia Russell.”_

 

* * *

 

“Looking _smoking_ , Lizzie,” said Tony Stark, winking at her as she exited the bedroom. “You’re gonna dazzle ‘em tonight, especially on my arm.” He winked and she laughed, as expected.

 

After a few weeks, Stark’s charm ran a little thin in places. Darcy just patted herself on the back for actually managing to keep his attention this long, which was mostly, she thought, her refusal to put out and her actual knowledge of computers. He seemed like he was playing a clumsy long con, where the end goal was to get in her pants. She restrained herself from rolling her eyes, since she’d recognized the signs of an AI in the house. It certainly made grifting a hell of a lot more of a challenge, even if she’d _love_ to to get her digital hands in that software. She’d never do it without permission, though; it felt too much like a violation for something sentient.

 

“I don’t know if I’m quite up to ‘dazzle’ level, Tony, but thank you.” She ducked her head, pretending to be a little flustered at the compliment.

 

“Ah, don’t be modest. God knows I never am. ‘Live your truth,’ or whatever bullshit the hippies are saying these days.” The way Stark threw his arm around Darcy’s shoulders was closer to friendly than romantic, but then he turned her to face him and kissed her gently on the lips. “Let’s go knock ‘em dead,” he said with a manic grin.

 

* * *

 

_Natia really liked establishing sightlines. That was the third thing Darcy noticed about her. The first was that she was gorgeous and if she invited Darcy into her bed, Darcy would definitely say yes. The second was that her eyes were sharper than a diamond saw and contained an intelligence that Darcy felt she was only seeing because she was allowed to._

 

_By the time Darcy had finished shutting the door, she had seen Natia catalogue every door and window in the apartment, flash her eyes to the knife block on the kitchen counter, and note the fire escape out the bedroom window._

 

_This woman was certainly someone to watch._

 

_“Cup of sugar, was it?” Darcy asked casually as she brushed a hand over her taser, reassuring herself that it was still there._

 

_“Technically, it’s ¾ of a cup,” Natia said cheerfully, holding up the measuring cup, which already had a thin layer at the bottom. “Figured it was a good, TV-trope excuse to meet my neighbor.”_

 

_Darcy allowed herself to chuckle, brushing past Natia to the kitchen, even though every instinct she had ever gained as a criminal was blaring ‘don’t turn your back on her!’ There were sirens and flashing lights involved._

 

_Standing on tiptoe to reach one of her top shelves, Darcy pulled down the glass jar where she kept her sugar, flicking open the seal. When she turned around, she saw Natia over by the front door, inspecting the security system that she’d installed herself._

 

_“This is top-of-the-line tech,” Natia said as she straighted to stare Darcy in the eye. “Did you install it yourself? I don’t think I saw it offered with the unit.”_

 

_“Oh, you know. Parents will worry about their little girl’s safety in the big, scary college town,” Darcy hedged. She was terrible at lying outright, but by god, her political science degree had taught her to dance around a subject like a motherfucker._

 

_“Hm.” Natia merely hummed noncommittally as she came back over to pick up the measuring cup from the kitchen counter._

 

* * *

 

Stark’s convertible entered the gates to the Famous Celebrity Party of the Week amid a hoard of flashing lights. She grinned and ducked her head, still playing up being shy, even after weeks of press attention attending gatherings on Stark’s arm. Not a single camera got a usable shot of her and she heard a few distressed sounds as several of the cameras stopped working altogether.

 

They pulled around to the front of the house and she made sure to still appear appropriately awed by the house in front of her. _I’ve broken into bigger than this because Nat was bored._ Stark appeared at her side, sliding across the bright red hood because why walk when you can be flashy? He tossed the keys to the valet and put an arm around Darcy’s waist.

 

“Are you sure it’s ok that we’re late?” she asked nervously as they headed up the walkway.

 

“Lizzie, babe? I _own_ this party. Let’s go.”

 

Stark led her into a stupidly ostentatious foyer and through to the back, where there was actually a pretty good setup. The party was in full swing, because of course, Stark never arrived on time. He liked to pretend that he invented the concept of ‘fashionably late.’

 

There were some other big arms-dealing moguls here, so of course, Stark gravitated right to them to brag about his latest designs, swinging by the bar on the way. Darcy made sure to make a few attempts at gaining his attention before flouncing off to pout at the bar and scan the room. She was much too professional to smile at the familiar face across the room.

 

* * *

 

_“You want me to what?!”_

 

_Natia rolled her eyes. “I know you heard me. I want you to hack some security on the Pentagon so I can get in and grab a few files that are pertinent to my interests. I’m willing to pay quite handsomely.”_

 

_“Look, I don’t know who you think I am—”_

 

 _“I know your security system didn’t come from worried parents. It doesn’t exist on any market because you made it yourself. I know that recently,_ someone _hacked the accounts of several famous men who also happen to be worth less that gum discarded on the sidewalk because they force women to sleep with them to keep their jobs. I know that they were exposed. And I know that no college dropout should be able to afford an apartment this nice, no matter what tech startup they’re running out of their living room.”_

 

 _“I’m taking a gap year,” Darcy muttered rebelliously. She’d gotten in a bit of trouble when a government agency got involved in her internship for science credits and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. “Anyway, even if I_ had _done all that stuff—and I’m_ not _saying that I did—who says I’d be up for hacking the literal US government?”_

 

_Natia grins. “Because we’re going after Thunderbolt Ross.”_

 

_Darcy leaned forward. “Ok… hypothetically, if I were capable of such heinous and evil crimes against my government—” Natia snorted. “—I might be listening. What did you have in mind?”_

 

* * *

 

Darcy slouched against the bar, stirring the cherry around in her drink moodily. After all, she had arrived here on Tony Stark’s arm and he’d ditched her immediately. To the outside eye, she had every right to be upset, but internally, she couldn’t be happier.

 

Grabbing a cocktail napkin, she asked the bartender for a pen and accepted it along with his sympathetic look. Looking bored, she sketched absently on the paper for exactly forty-five minutes while shooting increasingly annoyed glances at Stark. Eventually, she scowled at where he was gesturing, telling some grand story, and got up, drink and napkin in hand.

 

Darcy wandered the room, admiring the art. She had to cut through the corner of the dance floor at one point, bumping into quite a few people and slipping her napkin map of Stark’s house into the pocket of a familiar suit coat as she passed. As she came out the other side, someone bumped into her, making her dump her half-empty drink down the entire front of her dress.

 

“Oh my god!” the other person drawled in a soft Southern accent. Darcy looked up to catch Nat’s eyes as they twinkled before locking down firmly into her role. “Are you alright? I am so sorry. I’m just so clumsy, my feet got away from me!”

 

“It’s fine,” Darcy assured her, waving away attempts to help. “I’ll just head to the bathroom and try to clean up.” She pasted on an obviously fake grin, scowling as she turned away to the bathroom. Anyone who had been watching her would have seen her having a spectacularly bad night.

 

In the bathroom, Darcy wet the front of her dress more with tap water, doing nothing to the stain, but making the fabric practically see-through. She also retrieved the device Clint had stowed in the vents while impersonating the waitstaff earlier, and strapped it to her ankle.

 

Finished, Darcy once again set off into the party, arms crossed uncomfortably in front of her chest. She found Stark fairly easily and leaned in to shout over the music. “Babe, can we go home? I need to get out of this dress.” When he turned to look and his eyes bugged out just a little bit, she let herself smirk. “I might even let you help.”

 

Stark grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the door.

 

* * *

 

_The job with Ross had gone smoothly. So had the next one. And the next, and the next, and then, well..._

 

_High on adrenaline from their latest heist, Darcy and Nat swung into the back of the waiting van, which took off before the door was even shut. Giggling madly, Darcy let the momentum roll her into Nat’s side, kissing her deeply as the van spread up._

 

_“Aw, ladies,” came a familiar voice from the driver’s seat as Nat kissed her back. “Why do you two always start without me?”_

 

_Darcy pulled away as Nat continued to kiss down her throat. “Because you’re always—oh, fuck—because you’re always the driver, Clint. And because Nat knows what it does to you to—Jesus Christ, Nat—to, um, hear us back here.”_

 

_“Guilty,” Nat practically purred, pulling away from Darcy’s neck at last. The only reason they didn’t fuck right right there in the back of the van was because they still had to make it into their motel later, and they had to be decent for that. With a grace that Darcy still found incredibly sexy, Nat slid feet-first over the seats into the passenger seat while Darcy set to her work of making sure the traffic cameras didn’t have any good views of them._

 

_Hearing the choked noise Clint made that meant Nat was teasing him in the front seat, Darcy grinned._

 

_“God, I love my job.”_

 

* * *

 

When Darcy (she insisted on driving, knowing Stark’s tendency to get shitfaced right out of the gate) pulled up to Stark’s house, they were all over each other in seconds. She was interested to note that Stark actually seemed to be paying her quite a bit of attention, even drunk off his ass, and her estimation of him went up a couple of notches. She still wasn’t gonna fuck him, but the fact that he definitely seemed willing to make sure she enjoyed herself was approved.

 

They both stumbled out of the car, and Darcy fell against the trunk in her pretend haste to get to the other side of the car. She rapped on the lid twice, letting Nat and Clint know they could come out in five minutes, before practically throwing herself at Stark.

 

“JARVIS, security protocol alpha sierra sierra,” Stark mumbled against her neck. So the AI’s name was JARVIS. Huh.

 

“What, making sure your security man doesn’t spy on us?” Darcy asked with a smirk, knowing full well that it most likely just meant the cameras were off for the AI system. They hadn’t had time to study all the protocols before— Suddenly, something struck her and she pulled back to look Stark in the face. “Wait, you have a security protocol specifically for banging someone and you gave it the security code ‘ASS?’” Stark just grinned at her and Darcy threw her head back to laugh. Holy shit, that was actually hilarious. Maybe Stark wasn’t that bad.

 

Stark muffled her laughter in another kiss and she grinned into his mouth as she steered them towards the bedroom. When she sat on the bed to take her shoes off, she pushed a button on her ankle device, triggering a mini-EMP blast. The lights in house went out.

 

“What the fuck?” Stark actually seemed to snap out of it, which was impressive, considering how drunk he was. “JARVIS?”

 

“I’m sure it’s just a power outage, Tony,” Darcy reassured him, kissing up his neck. “Baby, it’ll be fine until we’re done.”

 

“No,” Stark shrugged out of her hold and moved towards the door. “Something happened to JARVIS, nothing ever happens to JARVIS. Stay here, Elizabeth.”

 

“Tony, who’s—” He was out the door before she could finish. God, _finally_. Darcy was up and moving.

 

* * *

 

 _“You want to go after Tony Stark._ **You** _want to go after Tony Stark. Just the other day, you were talking about how unbeatable his security systems were and how you don’t think you could go toe-to-toe with him.”_

 

_“Nat, that was four months ago,” Darcy pointed out reasonably from where she was hanging upside down off the end of her and Clint’s bed watching Nat do Tai Chi. “Which is like… a decade in tech years. I’ve learned since then. Besides, I’m not doing much hacking on this one.”_

 

_Clint snorted from his perch atop one of the dressers. “Yeah, because Nat and I can hack so much better than you.”_

 

_“No, that’s the beauty of it!” Darcy enthused, rolling over. “My plan involves way less hacking and way more grifting, with some brute force tech at the end.”_

 

_“Stark is a high-level, high-risk target. He acts like a spoiled child at times and he goes through women like paper towels, but you usually wouldn’t seek to punish someone like that,” Nat said from where she was still doing her movements. “Why choose him?”_

 

_Darcy’s eyes hardened. “Look. You guys know I was in PolySci, and I know you two keep up with current events. Stark is deeply, deeply entrenched in the wars in the Middle East. He makes weapons that kill anywhere from dozens to a thousand and hands them out like candy, making bank off of lots and lots of death. It may be that he doesn’t realize what impact his weapons really have or he knows and doesn’t care. I don’t really give a shit. I’d just really, really like to disrupt whatever he’s working on and maybe give him a kick in the pants by taking some of his stuff. I know we can’t really stop him from making something else, but damn, I know I want to try. Everything he manages to get out just ends up in more dead civilians.”_

 

_Nat and Clint shared a look, one that Darcy liked to term the “we’ve been in warzones” look that happened whenever something like this came up. She looked away, giving them privacy in their pain._

 

_Finally, Clint whispered, “Budapest,” in a cracked sort of voice and Nat just nodded._

 

_“What was your plan?” she asked, and Darcy grinned._

 

* * *

 

The first thing Darcy did while everything was powered down was head to the lab downstairs through the vents, plugging a USB into one of the main computers. It contained a program that would activate as soon as the power was back on that would wipe every image of her face, along with Stark’ most recent weapon designs, from the data banks and hopefully follow JARVIS back to wherever his mainframe was and delete all the stored data there too. She wasn’t 100% sure it would work, since there was AI involved, but it was the best she could do on short notice. Because Darcy was a great admirer of good work, there was also a personal greeting to JARVIS, although she hadn’t known his name when she’d snuck off to add it. She just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to say hi to her first AI.

 

That done, she headed back upstairs, muttering about her dress in the vents the whole way. Clint owed her $100 for saying she couldn’t do this heist in the dress they’d picked out for tonight. Darcy owed Nat half of that for teaching her how to do it. She was just happy the slit up the thigh let her move her legs, though she grumbled about doing it at all. However, she’d had to keep revising the code as she learned more about Stark’s systems, so they all agreed it was best for her to wipe the computers personally.

 

Glancing at her watch, Darcy figured she had about a minute and a half to make it to their exit point and picked up the pace a little. She was just rounding the corner to grin at Nat and Clint standing on the balcony with a few duffles when the lights came on and Tony rounded the opposite corner.

 

“Elizabeth, I told you to stay pu— what the fuck are you two doing on my property? JARVIS?” There was nothing but a robotic jumble in response.

 

“Yeeeeaaaah, I’m _really_ bad at staying put,” Darcy said with a grin, finally letting go of the ruse. “Don’t worry, he’ll be fine in a minute. I just needed enough time for the program to run before he woke back up. JARVIS, you said? He really is an excellent AI. Anybody else would have missed him.” She grinned at Stark’s gaping.

 

“Program?” he said sharply. “What program? What did you do?”

 

“Don’t worry, we just got rid of some stuff you don’t need. Welp, it was really cool hanging out with you, I admire your work in software and most of the time your sense of humor, but I gotta jet. You’re not really my type.” Darcy shot him finger guns and a wink, before running full tilt at Clint, who caught her as they both leapt off the building. Clint’s rope and harness rig caught them and lowered them safely onto the van that Nat, who had stealthily lowered herself and the bags to the car during the conversation, had pulled around.

 

“Not the driver for once!” Clint crowed as Nat took off, he and Darcy gripping a luggage rack as Tony Stark stumbled out on his balcony. Darcy blew him a kiss and waved. He flipped her off, scowling, before running back inside. She leaned over and kissed Clint before lowering herself over the side of the van and in through the passenger side window.

 

As Clint flipped himself into the back of the van, banging his head on the door on the way in and loudly complaining about it for the next mile and a half, Darcy leaned her head against the window.

 

“My internship boss, Jane Foster? She asked me before I went undercover if I could come back and help her out a bit,” Darcy said casually when Clint finished. “It would give us a good place to lay low for a while, in the middle of the desert. Besides, I kinda miss the stars.”

 

Nat rolled her eyes. “You could just ask, Darcy,” she said with fondness in her voice. “We know you and Jane were close.”

 

“It helps that you stole a bunch of her research back from those assholes at SHIELD,” Clint piped up cheerfully from the back of the van. “From what you’ve said, I dodged a bullet when I turned down their offer.”

 

Darcy rolled her eyes. “What, you didn’t want to be a jack-booted thug?”

 

“I don’t think they would have let me drink coffee straight from the carafe in government work.”  


“Clint, _we_ don’t let you drink coffee straight from the carafe, you heathen.”

 

“Aw, Nat!”

 

Darcy grinned and turned her eyes to the few stars she could see as Nat turned the van towards New Mexico. It was time for a break from illegal activities for a while.

 

**Author's Note:**

> As a note for something that might confuse some people, re: the description of the Thief Squad’s bedroom: Nat has her own bedroom and doesn’t often sleep in the same bed with Clint and Darcy. This suits all of them well as Clint and Darcy like to cuddle and Nat sleeps best by herself and needs a space she feels is her own. They use the main bedroom for sex and spending time together while awake.
> 
> Also, yes, Darcy’s alias as Elizabeth/Lizzie is a reference to Pride and Prejudice. Nat said she shouldn’t be so obvious, but Darcy pointed out that all of Nat’s aliases have the same initials, so Darcy won the argument.


End file.
